Postal delivery in London is about to get a little bit greener, with Royal Mail launching trials of nine fully electric mail vans. Made for Royal Mail by UK company Arrival, the shiny new vehicles have been built to carry out inner city deliveries, and will begin ferrying packages around the city this week.

Arrival, formerly known as Charge Auto, crafted the electric vehicles specifically to be used by Royal Mail, using ultralight composite materials and a battery-to-weight ratio that offers a 100-mile range (160 km).

Kicking off this week, the trials will see 3.5, 6 and 7.5-ton versions of the trucks start rolling out of Royal Mail's Mount Pleasant depot in central London. From there, they will carry packages between mail centers in the city and surrounding areas.

"Royal Mail is delighted to be collaborating with Arrival and pioneering the adoption of large electric commercial vehicles," said Paul Gatti, Royal Mail Fleet's Managing Director. "We will be putting them through their paces over the next several months to see how they cope with the mail collection demands from our larger sites. We have trialled electric trucks before but not of this type of innovative design and look forward to see what additional benefits they can bring to our existing fleet of around 49,000 vehicles."